‘The Impossible Possibility of Love’: Reinhold Niebuhr’s thought on racial justice
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088220979003 |
| Author | Liane Hartnett |
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088220979003
Journal of International Political Theory
2021, Vol. 17(2) 151 –168
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088220979003
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‘The Impossible Possibility
of Love’: Reinhold Niebuhr’s
thought on racial justice
Liane Hartnett
La Trobe University, Australia
Abstract
Love has been long lauded for its salvific potential in U.S. anti-racist rhetoric. Yet, what
does it mean to speak or act in love’s name to redress racism? Turning to the work of
the North American public intellectual and theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971),
this essay explores his contribution to normative theory on love’s role in the work
of racial justice. Niebuhr was a staunch supporter of civil rights, and many prominent
figures of the movement such as James Cone, Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr., J.
Deotis Roberts and Cornel West drew on his theology. Indeed, Niebuhr underscores
love’s promise and perils in politics, and its potential to respond to racism via the work
of critique, compassion, and coercion. Engaging with Niebuhr’s theology on love and
justice, then, not only helps us recover a rich realist resource on racism, but also an
ethic of realism as antiracism.
Keywords
Justice, love, Niebuhr, race, realism, theology
Introduction
Summoning love to redress racial injustice is neither new nor tangential to U.S. politics.
Thus, in his speech to the Democratic National Convention, the U.S. Presidential-elect,
Senator Joseph Biden (Pramuk, 2020) spoke of love’s potential to transform U.S. politics
including the hate at the heart of systemic racism. In the wake of neo-Nazi violence in
Charlottesville in 2017, former U.S. President Barack Obama, tapped into a similar sen-
timent when, quoting Nelson Mandela, he tweeted:
Corresponding author:
Liane Hartnett, Lecturer in International Relations, Department of Politics, Media, Philosophy, La Trobe
University, Bundoora, Melbourne, Victoria, 3086, Australia.
Email: Liane.Hartnett@latrobe.edu.au
979003IPT0010.1177/1755088220979003Journal of International Political TheoryHartnett
research-article2020
Article
152 Journal of International Political Theory 17(2)
No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his
religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love. For
love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite (as cited in Phipps, 2017).
This faith in love to redeem, to fortify, to salve finds expression in the guiding prin-
ciples of the Black Lives Matter movement (BLMLA, 2020; Lebron, 2017; Roberts,
2016). As the work of Martin Luther King Jr. attests, it has long animated a rich civil
rights tradition (King, 1963; see also, Hartnett, 2020). Yet, what does it mean to speak
or act in love’s name when redressing racism? This essay turns to a founding figure of
classical realism, Reinhold Niebuhr, and critically considers his contributions to this
question.
Reinhold Niebuhr might seem like an unlikely interlocutor on the subject of love and
racism. The pastor and public intellectual, as many of the articles in this special issue
suggest, may be best remembered for his classical realism and his work on war and
peace. However, as I discuss in this essay, it is impossible to fully comprehend Niebuhr’s
political prescriptions whether on the subject of war or peace, or love and racial justice,
without understanding the theological framework from which they derive. Niebuhr was,
in fact, a staunch supporter of civil rights and many prominent figures of the movement
such as James Cone, Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr., J. Deotis Roberts and Cornel
West drew on his thought. Indeed, King claimed to have been ‘much more influenced by
Niebuhr than Gandhi’ describing non-violent resistance as a ‘Niebuhrian stratagem of
power’ (Fox, 1985: 283). Further, as Cornel West reminds readers, Niebuhr’s seminal
Moral Man and Immoral Society, was written ‘fresh from his travelling in the U.S. South
for a series of lectures at Negro schools; speaking with his radical Union Theological
Seminary colleagues and students like Professor Harry Ward, Myles Horton, James
Dombrowski, Allen Keedy, and Arnold Johnson’ (2013: xii).
Despite this legacy, Niebuhr’s thought on race, and for that matter, love, has attracted
its fair share of critics. His thought for them is at best antiquated or at worst obfuscates
the nature of racism and strips love of its radical potential (Gentry, 2018; Morris, 2016;
Paeth, 2016). They query whether his realism tends to cynicism, whether his religiosity
imagines a universalism which inadvertently exculpates racism.
Why, then, think with Niebuhr about love and race? The impetus is part-historical and
part-ethical. In illuminating the relationship between love and race in Niebuhr’s thought,
I hope to demonstrate the significance of these often-neglected themes in the work of a
classical realist. If the emphasis on race seeks to remedy what Cecelia Lynch (2019)
describes as the ‘moral aporia of race in international relations’, or the disciplinary ten-
dency to erase the words and deeds, silences and omissions of canonical figures on the
subject; the emphasis on love goes some way to correcting the notion that love was alto-
gether extraneous to realist theorising of power or politics (See, also, Solomon, 2012).
Engaging with Niebuhr’s thought on love and race is not solely for the purpose of histori-
cal excavation. International political theory’s neglect of Niebuhr’s work on love and
race for well over half a century risks allowing a realist resource for redressing racism to
atrophy. Engaging with Niebuhr as an interlocutor, then, offers important insights into
the promises and perils of invoking love to respond to a central (and enduring) challenge
of late-modern political life.
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